Once & Future

by Cori McCarthy

  By the time they parted, Ari had to remember how to stand upright, her entire body tilting toward Gwen. So, there were still sparks between them. Sparks that would give Merlin’s magic a run for his money.

  Gwen smiled, still holding Ari close by the front of her stolen suit of armor. “Do what I say, and I’ll get you out of here and away from Mercer.”

  Ari glanced at where Kay and Merlin were cheering with the rest of them. “Just get my friends out of here, too. Including Val.”

  The queen took Ari’s hand and lifted their entwined fingers over their heads. People cheered, louder than when Ari had been fighting Jordan. They shouted and shook the thin pillars that held the tent over the stands. A horn blasted throughout the stadium, and all eyes turned to Val, standing on the podium, staring at Ari with a gloriously shocked look.

  Ari slipped on a smile, and her childhood best friend shook his head once before bellowing for the crowd, “To the queen and her new intended!”

  Flagons and mugs went up in all directions as the people toasted them.

  “Intended?” Ari laughed. “That’s not something I’ve been called before.”

  “It means—to them at least—that I’m going to marry you.”

  Gwen never let go of Ari’s hand as they traveled swiftly across the grounds toward the castle.

  “Gwen,” Ari started, “how could you let your people think you’d marry me?”

  “I could hardly do otherwise at this point. You were quite the crowd favorite. My people would be furious if I rejected you on the spot. We can always tell them later that the marriage didn’t go through.”

  Ari tried to drop her hand, but Gwen hung on as they approached the bridge gate. “See? Your pageantry is riddled with lies.”

  The queen sighed, and this time there was no enticing purr. “Great, now that we’ve pressed our lips together, let’s do that other thing we’re so good at—call each other names while you doubt my sincerity and I vow to never again get bashed against the rocks of your sense of right and wrong.”

  Val jogged to catch up, and Ari opened her mouth to argue back, but Gwen stopped her with a raised hand. “Val, go to the spaceport. Tell Mercer there’s been a change of plans and that they will wait until I’m ready to meet with them. They will not venture into my territory without permission again.”

  “But they’ll want…” Val’s eyes darted to Ari.

  “They will wait,” Gwen replied, her tone scorching. Val ran off in the direction of Error and the other small ships they’d seen when they landed on Lionel.

  Ari looked down as she and Gwen crossed the bridge, eyeing the moat filled with swirling mercury—Lionel’s chief natural resource. Once they were inside, they wound a quick path through the castle, and if Ari didn’t feel so faintish and thirsty in her armor, she would have asked where they were going. Finally, they entered a large boudoir. Gwen kicked off her shoes and immediately began to unwind the strict braid from her brow.

  Ari stood stiff and uncertain. Was she in the queen’s bedroom? She totally was.

  “Where’re my friends?” Ari asked.

  Gwen headed for a table bearing a large carafe. “They’re fine. The crowd will take a while to disperse. In the meantime, I need to figure out how long I can stall Mercer before I have to hand you over.”

  “You wouldn’t,” Ari said, her voice scratchy with doubt. Gwen filled a goblet and handed it to Ari. Ari took a sip and spit it out. “No more wine or mead. I need water.”

  “No. My planet needs water.” Gwen took the goblet back. She put it down with a sharp clap on the floor and beckoned for Ari to turn around. “I’ll get you out of that.”

  Gwen began to undress her. There were thousands of buckles at every joint, holding together dozens of pieces of armor. Gwen collected a small mountain of leather, chain mail, and metal beside them while she spoke. “The Mercer fleet that flashed its superiority all over my tournament was only half your doing. The black ship is here for you. The white one is meant to mock Lionel. Every single month, Mercer nearly dehydrates the population before delivering our supplies. They want us to sell junk Mercer products, and allow Trojan building permits, and give them a higher percentage of our mercury reserves, but I will not be bullied.”

  Gwen lifted off the breastplate, and Ari felt a thousand pounds lighter. “I need to go to Troy and file a claim for mistreatment. The problem is, I don’t have any bargaining chips.”

  Ari felt as if a piece of ice slid down her spine. “I’m your chip, am I?”

  “Of course not,” she snapped. “I don’t trade in people.” Gwen knelt to get the plates off of Ari’s shins, throwing them aside before sitting on her heels. Ari felt all sorts of awkward with the queen at her feet, staring up with those hard, brown eyes. “I honestly dream of the days when all my people wanted was to marry me off. Constant tournaments to find a consort. I’m lucky Jordan is the best knight in the galaxy, otherwise I would have been married the day after my coronation to some oaf.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Ari found herself saying.

  “It’s era appropriate.”

  “It’s a damn charade, Gwen.”

  “Yes, well, it’s also my life. The life I chose. The one you couldn’t even pretend to want for me when we were fourteen-year-olds.” Gwen turned her back to Ari, motioning to the strings holding her dress closed. “Do you mind?”

  “Um, sure.” Ari pulled at the top one. It was really tight. She worked the entire cross-stitch free a few inches all the way down her back, before going through it all over again. The dress sprang open and Ari won a five-year-old bet. One tournament day, when Lam and Kay were strutting around in the desert-like heat, Val had insisted that the royals wore fancy underwear beneath those stiff gowns, and Ari bet there was no way. They’d be too hot.

  Gwen’s bare backside curved in a strikingly gorgeous way.

  Ari’s mouth turned into a real desert, her hands aching to move from strings to skin. Her infamous impulses were singing, a siren song that always accompanied run-ins with Gweneviere. “You could always marry me.”

  Gwen glanced over her shoulder. “Granted, martyrdom is also era appropriate, but why would we put ourselves through something that painful?”

  “Because you don’t want to be married off to some oafish knight who happens to catch Jordan on an off day. Because I am a bargaining chip, but if I’m your wife, I’m your bargaining chip. And Mercer won’t be able to arrest me if I’m married to the queen of Lionel. I’d have—”

  “Diplomatic immunity.” Gwen turned, taking the intoxicating proximity of her skin away and leaving Ari’s hands empty.

  Gwen pulled the last piece of Ari’s chain mail over Ari’s head, taking most of the undershirt with it. Gwen didn’t pull it all the way off, leaving Ari mostly topless, arms tightly tangled in her own sleeves. Gwen held Ari there, and smiled. “Are you fucking with me?”

  “Excuse me?” Ari managed.

  “You’d marry me. To outsmart Mercer. You?”

  Ari examined her choices, her conscience. It didn’t hurt that her nearly bared skin thought this was a great idea with such potential. “Yes, I would.”

  Gwen let go. Ari looped the shirt back on, and Gwen reached back, pulling the strings taut on her dress in an impressively swift move.

  “You’re not getting changed?” Ari asked. “Then why did you have me untie you?”

  Gwen sighed like Ari was missing all the important points, and Ari reddened from her toes to the tips of her ears. “I wanted to see if you’re still afraid of me. You are. But don’t worry, we’ll keep this to politics.”

  Gwen sat on the edge of the bed. Ari couldn’t tell if she was relieved or disappointed. “Seventy solar years ago, Lionel’s founders negotiated a favorable arrangement with the Trojan government. It was no small feat. An era-inspired planet might sound attractive and lucrative, but it took a lot of convincing for Troy to relinquish the territory. Now they’ve changed their mind, and they’re letting Mercer wi
thhold hydration shipments. They hope we’ll pack up and hand the planet back. Not on my watch. This is my home.”

  Ari nodded. Gwen had always been sincerely in love with Lionel.

  “Tell me how you are the only Ketchan off-world I’ve ever heard of, Ari.”

  “I was found floating in a junked ship on the wrong side of the barrier, abandoned as space trash when I was seven. Kay’s family took me in.”

  Pain flashed over Gwen’s face, so raw that it didn’t feel like polite sadness over a bit of Ari’s backstory. But Gwen tucked away those feelings, putting her queenly expression back in place. “But why does Mercer want you so badly?”

  “Maybe they think I bypassed their barrier, or they’re still pissed at how outspoken Ketchans were about Mercer’s galactic monopoly.”

  “Oh, it’ll be more than that. The Administrator is infamous for his underground motivations, and for whatever reason, you’re special. He’s made a big stink about wanting you turned over. The whole galaxy is talking about it.”

  “This is why Kay wants us to go into hiding. And to take our friends with us, out of harm’s way.”

  Gwen shook her head. “They’ll find you easily. We have to face them.”

  Ari lined the pieces up, enjoying the daring, impulsive bits of this new plan. “We go to Troy, married, so that they can’t arrest me on the spot. And you’ll bargain for better treatment for Lionel.”

  “And you can demand amnesty for you and your friends, and find out why he wants you so badly.”

  “This could work,” Ari dared, skipping over the whole getting hitched part.

  “What about afterward, Ari?” Gwen pulled her knees under her chin. She had a way of looking young even while she looked old. Like her heart had been born at full maturity, and she was waiting for her body to catch up.

  “What about it?”

  “Will you run off again or will you stay with me? As my wife. Here.”

  Ari couldn’t lie. Lionel was a weird, fun place. Her friends loved it, and she loved her earlier memories from camp, but to live here permanently when her true home was far away and just… waiting? “I’d have to think about it.”

  “That’s fair.” Gwen nodded, glancing away. “There’s one more thing, and it’s forward, but I don’t care. I want a child. I’d already have one if my people weren’t so intense about wedlock. If this marriage lasts, there will be one. Or more. Can you handle that?”

  Ari’s surprise left her slightly confused. “I love kids.”

  “You do?” Gwen’s knees fell loose from her stranglehold on them.

  “But in the spirit of honesty, I have to tell you Mercer is in the habit of punishing the people I love. Badly. My adoptive parents,” Ari cleared her throat, “were arrested. We don’t even know where they are.”

  Gwen straightened up. “That’s easy. I’ll find out.”

  “The information is restricted.”

  “Not for the head of a damn planet. We’ll put it on the list of priorities when we meet with the council on Troy to argue Lionel’s mistreatment. After the wedding, of course.”

  Ari looked at Gwen anew. They were both exhausted. They were both dehydrated. And even though Ari had been the one sweating her ass off in the ring, she had a feeling that Gwen had been thirsty for much longer. “So you will marry me? You’ve decided that fast?”

  “Yes,” Gwen said.

  “A real marriage?” Ari shouldn’t have been thinking about the curve of Gwen’s back… and how it met her legs with such glory. Or that body flood of a kiss in the jousting ring.

  “A political union,” Gwen replied carefully, her slight blush the only indication that she was possibly remembering the way they’d melted together so well. “We’ll have to do it before Mercer storms the city for you. Then we’ll need to hightail it to Troy and file our marriage with the galactic state department. We can’t give Mercer an inch to get between us.”

  “I have a fast, albeit ugly, ship. We could be there in under a week.”

  “Okay.”

  “Done.”

  They were close enough to kiss again, and yet Ari knew there was an unbreakable barrier between them to rival the one orbiting Ketch. There always had been.

  The night was strewn with crystal stars. The torchlight circling the tournament ring added a glow to the familiar faces around Ari. Beyond them, beyond the lights, she knew an entire planet was watching her enter the biggest lie of her life.

  A political marriage. To Gwen.

  Beside her, Kay and Lam stood… wasted. Val kept them upright with a hand on each of their shoulders. Merlin slid up to her in the shadows. “I can fix this!” he whispered. “I can make those ships go away. Poof. No problem. No one needs to marry anyone!”

  “You can’t take out the entire Mercer Company, Merlin. Plus, you’re really drunk.”

  “There’snothingtodrinkonthisplanetbutbooze,” he whisper-shouted.

  Ari dug a finger in her ear. “Val?”

  Val stepped forward and took Merlin by the back of the robes like he was a young pup. Ari couldn’t even look at the magician; he was part of the reason why she felt like she was stepping into a lie. Ari hadn’t told Gwen about Merlin, his King Arthur shenanigans—or this Morgana who was out of sight, but not out of mind. And she hadn’t told Gwen that she was going to use whatever information the queen could get to break her parents out of prison.

  Ari knew how well that would land.

  “You look sick,” Lam said. “Too much wine or too much reality?”

  Ari leaned on Lamarack’s shoulder, sighing.

  Gwen came forward on Jordan’s arm, wearing a dress of red silk and white, pinned roses—and a crown. Silver, simple, incandescent. It caught the torchlight like a mirror and cast it around her in a halo of sparks. Gwen smiled at Ari and then at the woman conducting the ceremony. She lifted her arm from Jordan’s only to find Jordan unwilling to let go. The black knight was still in her full suit of armor as if she could wear it for a few more days without needing a break.

  Gwen kissed Jordan on the lips sweetly, and the knight relinquished the bride with stiff, unwilling movements. The ceremony took mere minutes, but it was long enough for Ari’s heart to race into a speed that left her gripping Excalibur, afraid. So bizarrely afraid. After an exchange of vows, Gwen pecked Ari on the mouth, and it was over.

  Done.

  Music lit up the tournament ring all around, while the planet began to dance and Gwen immediately started messaging Mercer. She took off her crown and dropped it in Ari’s hands as if she were a handy end table. Ari examined the silver wreath. “Does this make me king?”

  Val smiled at her, a little sadly, and plucked Gwen’s crown out of her hands. “Your title is queen’s consort.”

  Merlin peered from behind Val’s shoulder, eyes large, and chanted, “Love and Arthur. Oil and water.”

  Ari put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. He was her friend now, wasn’t he? She hoped so; she’d need him to face Gwen’s machinations, the corrupt government on Troy, and the gods damn Mercer Company.

  Not to mention the voice inside that whispered—You are one with King Arthur, and your destiny awaits.

  Merlin hummed a bit of Handel’s wedding march, flicked his fingers, and tried to scatter the tight knot of his headache. Alas, hungover magic was groaningly impossible.

  He’d already spent a full day of the flight to Troy recovering from the royal wedding, and the wedding night celebrations that spilled over onto the ship. He wasn’t the only one in rough shape. He remembered seeing Lam and Kay singing garbled versions of Old Earth songs before he passed out, but Merlin had more to get over than they did. It had been hard to tell what caused worse nausea: his eight… teenth cup of mead, or the sight of Ari and Gweneviere sealing their vows under the light of strange stars.

  Not only had he failed to keep them from meeting, they had gotten engaged and married by nightfall on the same day he’d made his useless vow. And now the scene that greeted Merl
in out the window was a fleet of six white Mercer vessels accompanying the newlyweds to Troy, where they would file their claim with the government and—hopefully—make it official.

  The scope of this failure was staggering. Epic.

  And as someone who’d lived through several volcanic eruptions and a Rolling Stones reunion tour, he didn’t throw those words around lightly. He picked himself up from where he’d been resting, which turned out to be under the round table in the main cabin. Lam was down there, too, curled like a delicate leaf despite their size. Kay slept sitting up in a chair, boots stuck to the floor and mouth permanently open.

  Ari—where was Ari?

  Merlin staggered on magboots that pinched his toes, thinking thoughts that stung his brain. He was letting it all happen again. Not just the inevitable parts. He was going down his own worst paths. Heavy drinking? He hadn’t imbibed this much in twenty cycles. He had lost entire Arthurs this way.

  Merlin tramped through the tiny rooms of the spaceship but didn’t find Ari anywhere. What he did find was Jordan, camped outside Kay’s room in full regalia. The only thing she’d removed was her black-plumed helmet, revealing ruddy cheeks that shone in high contrast to her pale white complexion.

  “Good day, mage,” she said, her voice both strident and smooth. She appeared too delighted with this title, as if she had rampaging doubts about his abilities. Merlin was still annoyed that Jordan had somehow gotten on board Error, despite his drunken pleas to leave her behind. Gweneviere had insisted on having her champion by her side, and Ari hadn’t been able to resist her new spouse’s request.

  Which was exactly what made Merlin’s left eye twitch.

  “Tell me they’re not both in there,” he said.

  “My lady the queen and her consort have, indeed, claimed this tiny room. The queen is preparing Ari for their marriage examination on Troy.”

  Excalibur lay discarded in the hall, and he thought about carving his way through the shiny silver door and stopping whatever was going on in there. Instead, he caught sight of himself in the door’s surface. He looked, if possible, even younger than he had when he’d woken in the Crystal Cave. It was hard to pinpoint what made the difference. Were his cheeks slightly rounder? He checked his stubble. Still formidably scratchy. Good.